Jeff Giles's blog

Marvel clearly isn't in any rush to make a Black Widow movie, and although Scarlett Johansson is presumably on the hook for appearances in any number of the studio's assorted projects, her lack of a franchise to shoulder on her own leaves her free to star in all kinds of interesting stuff in her downtime -- like, say, Under the Skin or Her.

It's going to be quite awhile before we really get an honest look at the upcoming Pacific Rim sequel -- that April 2017 release date seems awfully distant on the horizon at this point -- but if there's one person who has any idea of what we can expect, it's director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro, who recently sat down with Collider for a discussion that included a few tantalizing details.

We all chortled when Warner Bros. decided it was going to go ahead and make a movie "based on" Lego bricks, but that turned out pretty okay for everyone, so we'll refrain from laughing at the news that the studio is forging ahead with an "adaptation" of the hugely successful online game Minecraft -- even though it really does seem like they might be pushing their luck with this one.

We knew Warner Bros. execs had big things in store for fans of its DC properties, as well as visions of a new franchise for its Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but the studio dropped some major news regarding scheduling for those titles -- as well as its plans for more Lego movies -- during a shareholders meeting today.

When Robert Downey, Jr. sent film sites around the world into a frenzy last week by intimating -- and then backpedaling very quickly -- the idea that he might be in talks for Iron Man 4, we held off on writing up any of the action, mainly because it seemed like Marvel might have an actual announcement hiding up its sleeve.

Given that Kate Beckinsale has already starred in four Underworld movies -- and that the series seemed to be moving on without her for next year's Beckinsale-free Underworld: Next Generation, starring Theo James -- it seemed somewhat safe to assume that she'd wedged herself into that black bodysuit for the final time.

In this day and age, is it still possible for a trailer to lure you into a movie's world far enough to make you want to buy a ticket without giving away all of the story's narrative nooks and crannies? It doesn't happen as often as it ought to, but the answer is definitively "yes" -- and Disney's Tomorrowland is here to show us how.

After a quarter-century of stops and starts, it appears as though a third installment in the Ghostbusters franchise may actually be coming together -- and it even looks like the most recent of the many, many rumors surrounding the project might even have been on target.

When you're a director with the kind of track record Pete Docter has built -- and you're making a movie for a company with the level of immense goodwill that Pixar has accrued -- you can afford to be stingy with the details of your next movie, which is why the first teaser for Docter's next Pixar venture, Inside Out, really lives up to the "tease" part of the word:

It's been so long since we've heard any news regarding Paramount's big-screen adaptation of Baywatch that we'd assumed cooler heads had prevailed and the former World's Most Popular TV Show would just stay where it was, collecting dust in the fading memories of anyone who remembers the syndicated TV of the '90s.

About Jeff Giles

Jeff is an entertainment writer and editor whose work currently appears at a variety of sites, including Rotten Tomatoes, Paste, American Songwriter, Popdose, Dadnabbit, Diffuser, and Ultimate Classic Rock.